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Written by Ron Copis
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If today were actually a replay of tomorrow, such that when tomorrow became the next day, at that time called today, then, when it all seemed eerily familiar people would think that this new today was a replay of yesterday, which is in reality completely inverted from the truth. Not one person in 100 would ever trick to what was really going on. So watch yourself. Some days really are replays of tomorrow, and not yesterday, as is commonly assumed. To most people it doesn't matter. To some it does. And it's hard to tell who's which, especially if you're one of them. Paradoxically the more you're one of them the more it matters.
Most people cannot remember when their parents were children. That's nothing to be ashamed of. That said, I wouldn't go bragging it up, either.
A guy I know has a driveway detector alarm, and here's the problem with that: He HAS a driveway. And so the dang thing's going off all the time. He always has to go and reset it, and a few minutes later, it's going off again because it's detected the driveway again. You'd think, you'd really think, there were some way to register an existing driveway with the detector so that it never went off unless another driveway tried to sneak up on him... but no... you'd be wrong. I have no idea why he doesn't just leave it off; I have no idea what causes a fear of strange driveway incursions, and honestly I'm a little uneasy about trying to probe into the childhood of a person who thinks like that. And here's the real laugh—he probably isn't even scared a little tiny bit of sidewalks. But then, not everybody knows about sidewalks.
"Virgil Kane is my name and I blew out my flip flop, stepped on a pop top..." Man oh man, really really don't sing that around some people. And it's hard to tell you who those people would be. It's even harder to tell you the people you should sing that around. I can just say right here, there aren't many. Here's some advice, try "nobody" and see how that works out for ya. Unless you've already been doing that.
If anyone ever gives you a pet donkey for your birthday, name it "Kong"...that would be SO COOL.
Speaking of livestock, if a zombie bites a horse* or a cow, wait a little bit (heh) and then let that horse or cow bite you. You'll be set up! Unless you get surrounded you're a shoo-in to survive the plague, with all the privileges and free loot that always accrues to such survivors. Here's the reasoning... the root word of vaccination" is the Latin for "cow"... and the way they make snake antivenin is to let a snake bite a horse. True story, on both. Look it up if you don't trust me, and it's not that I'd blame you if you did (look), or didn't (trust), after all we've been through. However I doubt this trick would work with rabbits. It's not that they "couldn't" produce the cure in their blood, it's more a case of them simply not making it past the initial step, is all. Ewww. (*At least partial cred for this idea goes to Dr. L. Oxyer, Ph.Z)
And speaking of zombies, as indeed we were... the idea of a Zombie Petting Zoo has in fact been tried, and it was not a commercial success, and failing the USDA health inspection (twice) played only a very small part in the grisly denouement. I don't think this made the news.
Try not to walk down a public street yelling, "...I AM ANATHEMA TO NYARLATHOTEP...!!" ever. Unless you want people to offer you sinus meds. Best thing I can say about that is, your parents were right about accepting pills from strangers. Doubly so on syringes.
If a pirate's ghost ever appears and offers to guide you to where his treasure is buried, ask him for his driver's licence. If he has one he's a fake; walk away. This is SO obvious but it works every time so far. There's a flat learning curve on ghosts in general... and ghosts pretending to be pirates so's they can get some mortal meat to do them some free landscaping, even flatter... so, exactly how they came up with that trick at all in the first place is still a mystery. —Ron Copis |
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Written by Ron Copis
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OK, for a few decades on either side of AD200, the Han Dynasty in China was crumbling. Local warlords saw their chance and started trying to grab land from each other. It settled out to three of them (Wu, Wei, Shu), which is why it's called the Three Kingdoms (san guo) Period. It was an interesting time... a HUGE novel about it (which is free on the Web and I've read some) came out in the 1300s and about 15 video games (a few of which I've played) and a Chinese TV series...Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Anyway on the Shu side, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei swore an oath of brotherhood in a peach garden to advance the kingdom of Shu and unify China under it; a part of this oath was that they would all die on the
same day. Yeh well, it didn't work at all... they died in battle separately over four years and Wei under Cao Cao and later Cao Pi took over China...
That's the first thing that went through my mind when I heard Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcet died, and I don't think anyone else in the entire WORLD of seven billion souls thought that.
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Written by Ron Copis
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As in most things it appears to be a bell curve... at one end, if NObody knows who you are you could have a minor cardio- or cerebro- (or with three heads, a cerbero-, but that's uncommon) vascular accident which ould rapidly turn major for lack of attention. Or, some criminal predator could break in, and your safety level would be less than if someone "outside" were paying just a little attention to your life.
At the other end, if EVERYbody knows who you are, you're pretty safe in the medical emergency category but not so much concerning criminal predators, and the US Secret Service (inter alia) agrees with me there.
So big surprise, Moderation may turn out to be the Golden Mean, if that's not too pleonasmic. "To a point" the more people know who you are the safer you are. Past that... there is a downturn... but the vast majority of people sit nicely on or near the peak of that bell curve.
The breaking point at the low end is of course: zer0 people know who you are. Your safety begins to soar upward with merely one associate and even more so with two. The low end of the bell curve is steep—how about the high end, where's the falloff point...?
A long guess is "150 people" which is based upon simian research. There is apparently a limit on how many people a primate can be actively associated with and fully aware of on an ongoing basis; it's called the Monkey-Sphere and for humans it's 150...as usual, I'm not making this up...
So. Say 200 people know you. You can only be active with 150 of them, leaving 50 people knowing who you are and also knowing full well you just plain don't care about them. The rational response to this state of affairs is "So what?" stemming from the at least subconscious realisation that nobody can care about everybody individually, but only in the abstract.
Only someone seriously deranged would ever take the slightest offense. Out of those, very very few will have the bad wiring it takes to bring them to the point of violence against someone in their own Monkey-Sphere with such a trivial cause.
From common sense interpolation of the odds it becomes clear that you can probably have as many as 1000 people knowing who you are before your personal safety level realistically budges from absolute peak. Maybe more. I'm not sure what the threshold is for "celebrity" status, as out of any given 100 celebs in the news on any given day I only know 20 of them...who makes up these rules anyway? Ever wonder that? Whatever. It's pretty clear that your personal safety level falls off pretty dang gently with the addition of each 1000 people knowing who you are.
In view of all this fancifully extrapolated insight my personal standard is (now), when I get 10,000 instances of fan mail, both snail and e-, I'll assume only 1% of fans ever write, so I'm up to a million fans, 999,850 of whom could conceivably hold an irrational grudge, and it's time to hire a bodyguard. A good one. Because I can beat up most bodyguards I've seen.
Not that I ever would. That thing on July 17, 2006, well it wasn't me; I wasn't even there, and I wish they'd leave me alone about it, and that definitely means YOU, Benjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant administrator, Office of Water, EPA. Cripes!
—Ron Copis
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I work somewhere in the field of law...actually, I work on depositions, and no-- I really can't talk about much. I signed an NDA that would curl your hair (and straighten the curly ones) which I take seriously. Truly, most depositions aren't that remarkable. Just people on the make... hurt, sick, and looking for a way to make others pay for their own mistakes, mostly, if not entirely. I don't find people like that interesting.
Then again I do get some funny stories... maybe...
...I'm reading this expert witness deposition and up pops a word I thought was a dyspronunciation or a pooched transcription: Arthrosclerosis.
Well, that's too close to "atherosclerosis" so I put a [sic] on it, as is policy, and then it pops up again. So I do a CTRL+F and it's used like ten times...(!)
Google time... turns out yes, it's a word, and yes, it mostly means "stiff joints" (any good arachnid knows what "arthropod" means) but an alternate meaning really is "fatty plaque in arteries"... I just keep hitting Google entries to make sure it's not just a widespread malapropism and I find this phrase: "Arthrosclerosis is the major cause of cerberovascular accidents..."
Right... Cerbero-vascular... so of course this is much more of a danger for you if you're a three-headed dog guarding Hades(!) I decided in this case two wrongs made a right and there were too many legitimate entires, it was a real word, if obscure; removed the [sic], and moved along.
A few minutes later I read in the depo: "Upon catheterization the patient had advanced disease in three arteries."
I sat there quiet a minute. It all made sense now. Three arteries; one per head, apparently. Sometimes you just admit defeat when it's stacked up unanimously against you, like Mr Douglas in "Green Acres"...
Now I don't know how truly funny this is to somebody without their head up their 455 and still neckdeep in deadlines, but there it is; it happened, and it happened to me. —Ron Copis |
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Written by Ron Copis
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"Yes, we do have to give visible minorities an extra nudge, extra help to get where they were prevented from getting for centuries." (referring to Skin Color Matters)
Once, that was definitely true. There were laws preventing people who looked different from improving themselves and their lives.
But a question: when does it stop? Segregation laws are now only in the memories of grandparents. Two full generations-- of all races-- have not lived on either side of legalised oppression. It is not their reality any more.
So who's this "we" who "has to" atone for injustice done long ago. Always remember that laws are enforced at gunpoint. It's very good to be very careful about using deadly force regarding what anybody—or everybody—"has to" do.
What about individuals who've never done anything wrong towards anyone?
I keep hearing the term "visible minorities"...
What are INvisible minorities? Who are they, what's their life like, what's being done for them. Does anything need to be done?
There are a lot of people who are heavily disadvantaged in everyday life but nobody even knows about it. Sometimes they can cover themselves and "look" normal... and sometimes they can't.
Who's more disadvantaged... someone with "visible" darker skin in an age when the President of the United States has dark skin, or someone with INvisible voices screaming in his head half the time but struggles through the day anyway?
Seen closely, how many people have NO disadvantages? Is there anyone whom "society" could not find a reason to "take care of"? Those who run "society" have a vested interest in extending their own power. Think about who tells you what. And then, why they tell you that.
As always, Who decides? Who decides who needs help and what kind and how much? Friends and family, people in the community, a private association of volunteers, or some remote faceless Government bureaucrat who can call on a squad of armed men if things don't go exactly his way?
Let people do as they will, and a lot of the right things get done. Force people to do the right things, and they forget what right even is. |
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